My #WorldStageMY experience

If the chance presented itself, the members of Far East Movement know exactly which clutch of songs they’d happily refurbish. “Every Disney theme in history, starting with Aladdin,” deadpans Prohgress. “We would do every Batman movie even though our music wouldn’t fit  we would still do it,” adds Kev Nish.

Repeat visitors to the region, the Los Angeles-based quartet  including J-Spilff and DJ Virman  is in Malaysia, part of a stellar line-up of performers for MTV World Stage. This annual pilgrimage for music lovers, now half a decade strong, is not only a global series that gathers multi-genre talents under one umbrella; it’s also a testament to these artists’ gravitational pull. Few local venues are tougher to pack than Surf Beach at Sunway Lagoon, which, at its optimum, tends to mimic a wailing wall of teenage girls, teenage boys and their extremely supportive parents.     

While they make no bones about creating eardrum killers  “a little bit of polka, a little bit of ballroom dancing,” jokes J-Spliff — the lightheartedness belies a diligent streak. Before they went on tour alongside N.E.R.D. and Lady Gaga, Kev Nish and Prohgress were interns at a record label, while J-Spliff worked as an office manager. The slow, grassroots build, spanning a decade, seems to have made them more appreciative of their success. “We look at it as a definite marathon as far as the work (is concerned). We always want to stay hungry. We never want to slack.”

Talent transcends race

And so it was time for my wet-blanket question. “Talent and hard work always transcend race. It was and will always be about the music and its connection with the audience,” I quoted filmmaker Justin Lin, who used the band’s track Round Round in his 2006 feature The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. “That sh*t went from here to like really deep, like, whoa,” laughed J-Spliff.

 â€œAsian-Americanness, as far as Far East Movement, is very important,” stresses Kev. “I remember reading a comment on Facebook. They were like, ‘You shouldn’t act Western. You should act Asian.’ And I’m thinking, we should act how we were raised. We were born in L.A… (Our Asian-Americanness) is a big part of our lyric choices, how we choose our beats.”

 As I stood entranced in the mosh pit on Sunday evening, I witnessed just how Far East Movement, in their red boiler suits, propels fans into the deep end of a good time. Aside from hits such as Like A G6, Change Your Life, Rocketeer and Turn Up The Love, their 12-song set also included a tribute to their heroes, the Beastie Boys, an inflatable duck bobbing up and down the pool of warm bodies and Prohgress crowd-surfing shoeless. Far East Movement totally ruled my night.

Other surprises

Earlier, of course, there were other surprises. Opening the show was the energetic Joe Flizzow, a Malaysian hip-hop star from the suburbs of Subang Jaya.

But it was the South Korean-Chinese boy band Exo that dominated this year’s World Stage. From their slick choreography and precision grooming to their soaring social media exposure and nonchalant blurring of old-think gender categories, the group’s twelve members are truly creatures of the present tense, a Super Junior for the 2010s. A steady drizzle didn’t deter close to 15,000 admirers, some of whom camped out as early as Friday, from enjoying the song-and-dance spectacle.

Courting controversy

“Celebrity is a crazy thing,” states Robin Thicke. “Miley and I knew exactly what we were doing at the awards. It’s the MTV Awards. It’s the place of shock and awe. It’s the place to provoke… and for me, I’m just happy to be getting all this attention because it gives a chance for people to hear my music.”

The 36-year-old American-Canadian singer-songwriter is both candid and studied while fielding questions from curious journalists. “I’ve always wanted to be an artist, but with this album I want to be an entertainer,” he says. He remains tight-lipped, however, when it comes to the lawsuit involving his recent smash Blurred Lines. “All I can say is that I have the utmost respect for Marvin Gaye and his family. It’s always tough when it comes to creation and inspiration.”

His nascent notoriety makes it easy to forget that Thicke has been around for over a decade. In the video for When I Get You Alone, a forgotten gem from 2002, he was a bike messenger with Jesus hair, a scruffy Orlando Bloom. The long locks may be gone, but his core appears to be the same. “Blurred Lines sounds like something that would’ve been in the middle of my first album (“A Beautiful World”). The difference is that it has a sense of humor, which I hadn’t had for the last four albums.”

Three different voices

While he relishes seeing fans “screaming, singing and dancing” and getting to “be part of this collective energy,” he has spent most of his career penning songs for artists such as Jordan Knight, Christina Aguilera and Brandy. It’s something he misses. “I haven’t had any time in the last four, five months and it’s starting to burn at me because every time I get some time off, I just want to write songs. So I think being a writer is at the forefront of my expression.”

Staring down his first Asian audience hours later, Thicke burrows deep into the role of soul singer while delivering a suite of nine songs. His ‘70s-style vocals are at their finest on the ballad Lost Without U. As someone commented on YouTube about the track Love After War, “He sings in, like, three different voices, switching back and forth from Michael McDonald to Darryl Hall to that falsetto.” He said that it was his job “to keep raising the bar” and with this performance, I think he just did.

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Catch the full show premiere of ‘MTV World Stage Live in Malaysia 2013’ on Saturday, Sept. 21 at 11:30 a.m.

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Special thanks to Loh Bi Feng, Dawn Lum and Adeline Ong.

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